Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Ode to Mad Dog

Long before I was assigned the Mad Dog, I knew I was destined
to fly her. My company assigns seniority within new-hire classes according to
the last four digits of your social security number, and with a sub-0300 SSN I
was guaranteed to be one of the most junior in my class and assigned by default
to the most junior seat at the airline: New York Mad Dog FO. I was at peace
with that, and after six plus years of the stultifyingly automated JungleBus I
was honestly ready for a challenge and a change of pace. The Mad Dog’s rugged
design and old-school cockpit held a certain attraction for me, and my only
real regret was that I never got a chance to fly the DC-9 before it was
retired.

That said, I wasn’t quite prepared for just how busy the Mad
Dog is, particularly in the right seat during ground operations. The preflight,
pushback, after engine start, taxi, before takeoff, after takeoff, descent,
approach, before landing, after landing, and shutdown flow patterns and
checklists are all considerably longer than on the JungleBus (a couple of those nearly three times as long). Engine starts just about require three hands. Quite
a few switches on the right side of the cockpit belong to the FO even while
Pilot Flying with the autopilot off. The airplane has VNAV and autothrottles,
but both are glitchy enough to require close attention and frequent
intervention to smooth out their operation and ensure compliance with
restrictions. The relatively small wing means that very careful attention must
be paid to speed and maneuvering margins both after takeoff and at cruise
altitude, which seldom exceeds FL330. The brakes are by turns pitifully weak
and unpredictably grabby, and it’s nigh impossible to symmetrically deploy and
spool up the thrust reversers. This is an airplane with a fairly steep learning
curve; I did well in training only by studying my ass off (it also helped to
have a sharp training partner with experience on the airplane).

Coming to the line as a brand new FO was an eye-opening
workout. Many of the captains I initially flew with on reserve had been on the
airplane for years and were used to an experienced FO’s pace of operations. I
sometimes had to remind them that I was new and needed a little more time.
Every trip I made mistakes, found more gotchas, learned new tips and tricks,
and saw more unfamiliar glitches and failure modes. There’s a lot of tribal
knowledge among Mad Dog drivers, much of it not written down anywhere. And
then, after a couple months, I was able to hold a junior line and often flew
with captains who were themselves brand new to both the airplane and the left
seat. With only a couple hundred hours in the airplane, I was occasionally the
“experienced guy” passing on my scant slice of the tribal knowledge.

I passed the magic 400-hour mark, releasing me from
probation, after only five months of line flying. Remarkably, I found myself
getting comfortable with the airplane. Actually, that’s not exactly the right
way to put it, because I continued watching the Mad Dog as closely as ever, if
not more so. Perhaps it is better to say that I got comfortable with being
uncomfortable. Relaxed preflights, clean uncluttered cockpits, flawlessly smooth
autopilots and autothrottles, and trying to stay awake as we blithely cruised
across the country at FL370 all faded from memory until they seemed like
distant, fanciful dreams. I came to simply accept the Mad Dog’s flaws and
quirks as just the way life is. I didn’t pine for a more relaxed, more
sophisticated airplane. The hardest part of coming to the Mad Dog is coming to
the Mad Dog, and that was already done.

And in fact, once I accepted the plane’s busyness and
quirkiness, I actually found quite a few things about it that I really liked.
For starters, it’s built like a brick shithouse. The systems are simple and
robust, and while there’s not a great deal of redundancy the plane doesn’t
really need it as it’s not horribly dependent on hydraulics, electric, etc. The
primary flight controls are all manual, with control cables driving servo tabs.
It hand flies pretty well for being a notorious truck; though control forces
are fairly high, it’s easy to put the plane right where you want it and keep it
there. Near-centerline thrust makes single-engine work a cakewalk. The
extension speeds on the very draggy flaps are ridiculously high (starting at
280 kts) so it’s easy to get down when you find yourself high. The pilots are so
far forward of the engines that even on the JT8D model it’s really quiet, and
though the cockpit looks like the bridge of a Russian submarine, it's actually
laid out pretty logically. The Flight Mode Annunciator may look like a 1980s
football scoreboard but it’s large and visible in any lighting conditions. And
once you figure out the myriad controls for the cockpit lighting, it’s almost
infinitely customizable which makes for a very comfortable nighttime
environment.

I found myself growing downright fond of the airplane. More
than one friend suggested that my newfound appreciation for the Mad Dog was
nothing more than Stockholm Syndrome. Perhaps. The reality is that, much like
taildraggers, a certain amount of the Mad Dog’s cachet comes not despite its
flaws but because of them. It’s frequently stated to be a “real man’s airplane”
(though I hasten to add that several female friends have flown it for years and
claim to love it). Airbus pilots, like Cherokee drivers, are considered perhaps
a little suspect for no other reason than that their airplanes can camouflage
weak flying skills, while Mad Dog wranglers, like tailwheel pilots, get a (sometimes
undeserved!) presumption of competence. In 757/767 training, each instructor
has asked what fleet I’m coming from and, informed of my Mad Dog status, to a
man they’ve given a relieved little wave and assured me I’d do great on the
Boeing.

Given all this, I wasn’t planning on leaving the Mad Dog
anytime soon. I enjoyed the fruits of its juniority, spending a mere six weeks
on reserve in New York, soon thereafter holding weekends-off regular lines, and
then getting back to Minneapolis after eight months of commuting. Of the other
aircraft in my base, the Airbus has remained improbably senior (nobody wants to
leave it!) and the 757/767 category was slowly shrinking. But then pending
aircraft retirements were cancelled, the category got additional flying, there
was movement from senior FOs upgrading to captain, and suddenly there was a bid
out for fifty (!) MSP 757/767 FOs. I ran the numbers and concluded I’d have about
the same seniority in either airplane. The Boeing paid more and had better
trips, though I might not be able to hold international flying. I was still
undecided when I had lunch with (now-former) Flying editor Robert Goyer on an
Austin layover. I mentioned the possibility of bidding the Boeing but noted I’d
have to spend a month at training. “Don’t you like training for new airplanes?”
prodded Goyer. He had a point, I actually do, and I've wanted to fly the 757 since I was ten years old. That decided it; I put the bid in
that night.

I was awarded the Boeing in February and didn’t start
training until November 5th, so I had plenty of extra time to
appreciate the Mad Dog. The last four days on the plane were so hilariously
Maddogish that they merit their own separate post. Meanwhile I wrap up training
on the Boeing in a couple days and will be enjoying some paid time off over the
holidays while I wait to be assigned OE/TOE.

4
comments:

Tom
said...

Enjoyed your last Flying article, Sam; looking forward to hearing about the final MD flight. And, I've heard that Kingston isn't pleasant; I did really enjoy Grand Cayman, if you ever get there on the 757/767 or on your own time. Hope to read some day about a future trip in/out of SXM too. Good luck and enjoy the new airframe!